Williams F1 driver Logan Sargeant on growth, adversity, Miami, and more – Business Insider

• Logan Sargeant is the only American driver in Formula 1 right now.
• Born and raised in Florida, he’s looking to score points at the Miami Grand Prix this weekend.
• Sargeant chats about the rough start to the season, unwinding in Bali, and Formula 1’s US growth.
• This article is part of “Behind the Wheel,” a series about the highly competitive and high-tech world of Formula 1.

Logan Sargeant stretches out on a large sofa overlooking the East River and lets out a quick yawn. You can’t blame the 23-year-old Floridian for being a bit sleepy — he’s on a one-day media tour of New York City. It’s a quick pit stop on his way to this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix.

“I got in late last night and woke up pretty early,” he said with a laugh. “Not much time to do much of anything.”

Such is life for a Formula 1 driver, with nonstop, global travel being the norm. Since the start of his rookie campaign last year, Sargeant has crisscrossed the world, experiencing both the highs and the lows of the sport.

On the positive side, he scored a top-10 finish at last year’s US Grand Prix in Austin, becoming the first American driver in 30 years to score points in the series. On the negative side, he had to retire from last year’s Qatar Grand Prix after nearly passing out from heat exhaustion. And his team — Williams Racing — has yet to score a point on the young 2024 campaign.

“It hasn’t been the smoothest, but there’s been plenty of flashes of positives,” Sargeant said. “We just need to get rid of the negative stuff, and it’ll start coming to us.”

Sargeant hopes his team’s fortunes will change at this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, a race held almost literally in his backyard. The Florida native grew up in Fort Lauderdale, just a stone’s throw from the Miami International Autodrome, a course constructed in and around Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.

And, as expected, Sargeant’s phone has been blowing up all week with messages asking for tickets.

“I do my best to get as many as I can,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to have that extra support there.”

Business Insider sat down with Sargeant to chat about this weekend’s race, how he’s dealt with adversity during his sophomore season, and Formula 1’s continued growth in the US.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

We’re five races into the 2024 season, and it’s been a bit of a struggle for Williams. How has your team’s car compared to your competitors?

The car has definitely taken a step forward from last year, but everyone has. That’s the tricky position we’re in. The car is in a relatively decent place. We just need to find a way to get more performance out of it, whether that’s upgrades for the future or just extracting more. It’s extremely tight in the midfield section from 10th place to the back, so the little details matter more than ever.

At the Australian Grand Prix, your teammate — Alex Albon — crashed in practice. But the team opted to let him race in your car and withdrew you from the race. You said that was one of the hardest moments of your career. How did you handle it in the immediate aftermath?

To be honest, I went and spent a week in Bali. Had a good time, worked out hard, and just kind of stuck to the plan, moved on. I didn’t hold on to it for more than a day. From that point forward, it was just looking forward to getting back in the car. I just kept looking forward and haven’t let it affect me.

Decompressing in Bali — how’d that trip go?

The food was incredible. My favorite thing is how good they do breakfasts. From there, you go surf. So yeah, I had a lot of fun. Doing all of that, I wasn’t thinking about Australia.

Your last race was in China. Now you’re heading to Miami. Flying around the world for Formula 1 sounds incredibly exhausting. How have you managed it?

This year has been far, far more difficult. The way the schedule is structured this year is brutal. For the drivers, it’s one thing — you know, we get the luxury of flying nice and the benefit of going on all the good flights, good hours. But for the rest of the team, it’s even harder. The body clock shifts constantly week after week. I don’t think I’ve been on a proper sleep schedule for more than seven days in a while.

So that really starts to play a role. You really feel fatigued. With this first part of the season, the flights have been massively long, and the time shifts are huge — a minimum of eight hours. So it’s tough.

But at least you’ll be back home in Miami this week, your second time competing at your home race. Is it true that, as a kid, you go-karted in the Hard Rock Stadium’s parking lot, right around where the track is now?

At times! It is really cool. I guess the coolest part is coming back after starting out in Miami. I went through my whole career, and to be able to come back and race in F1 where it all started is a bit of a — bookmark moment? Checklist moment? I don’t know how you’d say it, but to come back is amazing. The nicest part is having friends and family that can come to the race. I always say, you really get a different feel and vibe racing at home, an extra source of motivation for sure.

When you were growing up, Formula 1 wasn’t even close to being as popular as it is today. Has the sport’s transformation, making its way into mainstream US culture, been somewhat surreal for you?

Yeah, for sure, and it’s still a work in progress. It still has room to continue growing. But when I was a kid, for example, I don’t think anyone, especially people I went to school with, knew anything about racing or Formula 1 in general. And that’s definitely a big shift, for younger people now to know about the sport. And having the opportunity to go to races makes a huge difference.

But it’s always hard for me to tell completely since, of course, all of my friends and family around me are very interested in the sport. It’s not often I get to really experience people outside of my circle and see how it is for them. But when you look at the races, they’re in demand, and that’s a good sign. Not to mention, we always put on great events.

Miami has changed a lot in the last decade, particularly when it comes to being a sports destination. Has that been kind of surprising to you?

It’s special. This might be me being a naive kid, but, for me, it all started when LeBron James went to Miami. That’s what sparked my major interest in Miami sports. I was obsessed with the Miami Heat at the time, and following that, I got extremely into watching the Miami Dolphins play. And yeah, we have a baseball team, Florida Panthers, a soccer team with Lionel Messi, plus other Barcelona greats. It’s really cool.

What would you say is your goal for this weekend’s race?

It’s always a tough question because we don’t know where we’ll be from a team-performance standpoint. It obviously hasn’t been easy so far, and we’re still looking to hopefully score points. And the first step is just to have a clean weekend. As a team, we’ve struggled to do that so far, and that has to be the first objective. If we can do that, then things will look significantly better. I think we have the pace to be close to scoring points, but we really need to nail everything. A clean weekend will give us the best chance.

With Lewis Hamilton announcing before the season even started that he’d be leaving for Ferrari at the end of the year, has it been a particularly strange and stressful season with drivers already jockeying for seats at different teams? Rumors are constantly swirling.

I don’t think so. If I’m honest — I don’t know this at all; it’s just my feeling, but it was probably a leak that forced them to say it. I don’t think he’d announce it before the season, especially when you have to drive all year for the team.

But other than that, I feel like at the end of the day, the rumors swirl, and drivers looking for seats is constant. It doesn’t matter if it’s public knowledge or not. It’s always going on. So it doesn’t really make a big difference. Just focus on yourself and try to find a way to perform better — leave the rest to your managers.

I’m still intrigued by that Bali trip. Aside from the food, what was the best part of the whole experience?

The nature-y, naturistic vibe of being able to go on hikes and look at amazing waterfalls was pretty cool. Plus, I love being in the water, on the beach.

You’re a Florida guy, after all.

Exactly!